Quartet (1935)

This is a work in three movements wholly composed of fixed rhythmic patterns.

"I had no idea what it would sound like, not even what instruments would
be used to play it. However, I persuaded three other people to practice
the music with me, and we used whatever was at hand : we tapped on tables,
books, chairs, and so forth. When we tired of these sounds, we invaded
the kitchen and used pots and pans. Several visits to junkyards and lumberyards
yielded more instruments : brake-drums from automobiles, different lengths
of pipes, steel rings, hardwood blocks. After experimenting for several
weeks, the final scoring of the Quartet was finished: it included the
instruments that had been found, supplemented by a pedal tympani and a
Chinese gong which lent to the whole a certain traditional aspect and
sound."

Trio (1936)

The Trio is a suite of three movements composed of fixed rhythmic patterns

When John Cage, hungry for employment, appeared at Harrison`s San Francisco apartment in 1938, Harrison helped him with the energy and generosity that would so often characterize his interpersonal relationships. Through Harrison`s connections in the San Francisco Bay Area, Cage soon found himself with not one, but several job offers. He chose a faculty position at Seattle`s Cornish School because Bonnie Bird, the school`s modern dance instructor, described to him a closet full of percussion instruments. Bird thereby reinforced Cage`s experiences of the previous three years: the most enthusiastic reception for the percussion music he had been writing since 1935 came not from musicians but from dancers. No sooner did Cage arrive in Seattle than he organized an ensemble of amateur percussionists, ultimately including both musicians and non-musicians. On their first concert (December 9, 1938) he programmed his own "Quartet" (1935) and "Trio" (1936), as well as works Cowell had published in the New Music Orchestra Series in 1936 by Ray Green, William Russell, and Gerald Strang.

Living Room Music (1940)

for percussion and speech quartet is in four movements: "To Begin", "Story",
"Melody", and "End". No percussion instruments are used. Instead, Cage
indicates that "any household objects or architectural elements
may be used as instruments". Examples given are things such as
magazines, a table, "largish books", the floor, a window
frame. In the second movement the players perform a rhythmic reading of
a text from Gertrude Stein`s The World is Round: "Once upon a time
the world was round and you could go on it around and around."
The third movement is optional. In it, one player performs a melody on
"any suitable instrument". this is an informal music, a home
entertainment. Cage`s percussion players were frequently not professional
musicians. His earliest ensemble consisted of bookbinders he knew. In
Living Room Music they are as the amateurs of the past, sitting around
the table at home with their parts and playing for their own pleasure.

Double Music (1941)

"I found that I liked noises even more than I liked intervals".
John Cage, in "Lecture on Nothing". In the remaining works of this period
- Living Room Music (1940), the Third Construction (1941) and Double Music
(Apr. 1941) - Cage returned to the use of rhythmic structuring on a micro-
and macrocosmic scale, and to flexibility in instrumentation and performance.
The instruction in the score of the four-movement Living Room Music that
"Any household objects or architectural elements may be used as
instruments" is reminiscent of the statement quoted earlier in
connection with the Quartet: "...the infinite number of sound sources
from a trash heap or a junk yard, a living room or a kitchen..."
And in the Third Construction, we find a wide array of instruments both
trashy and exotic, ranging from tin cans and cricket callers to quijadas
and teponaxtle. The 1935 Quartet is also recalled - as is Cowell`s Mosaic
Quartet of the same year - in Cage`s instruction that the third movement
of Living Room Music (titled "Melody") may be omitted. Here, players 1-3
use their household objects to accompany player 4`s tune, which - the
score instructs - "may be played on any suitable instrument: wind,
string or keyboard, prepared or not". in the second movement -
"Story" - the household percussion is set aside and replaced by a setting
for a speech quartet of a text by Gertrude Stein: "Once upon a time the
world was round and you could go on it around and around." The manner
and gestures used here are very similar to those found in the well known
Geographical Fugue (1930) by Ernst Toch (1887-1964). The rhythmic structures
of Living Room Music are often difficult to detect. This is also true
of the Third Construction which, at 24 2/2 bars, is by far Cage`s largest
work of the period. The macro-structure, based on an examination of changes
of tempo and timbre, and dynamic shapes, would appear to be 5:3:2; 5:4:5
(or, alternatively, 10:14). But the distinguishing of either of these
sets of proportions at a microcosmic level is more difficult to justify:
while some 24-bar units divide exactly into these proportions, others
ignore them completely. Elsewhere, in any given section some lines will
pay greater attention to the proportions than others. It would seem that
Cage, having devised a system through which he can structure form according
to purely durational (or rhythmic) considerations, and having experimented
with that system in more or less strict fashion, now feels able to use
his structured forms with whatever degree of freedom he wishes (rather
than letting the structures dictate to him).

This is certainly the case in Double Music, for four percussionists.
As seeming proof of the flexibility of his system - and perhaps in part
realizing his ambition to create "the means...for group improvisations
of unwritten but culturally important music" - Cage here writes
only one (horizontal) half of the piece (i.e. the parts for players 1
and 3). Parts 2 and 4 were written by his fellow percussionist and composer
Lou Harrison. The diversity of instruments chosen is no greater than in
many of Cage`s solo efforts: Player 1: Six graduated water buffalo bells;
six graduated muted brake drums Player 2: Two sistrums; six graduated
sleigh bells; six brake drums; thundersheet Player 3: Three graduated
Japanese temple gongs; tamtam; six graduated cowbells Player 4: Six muted
Chinese gongs; tamtam; water gong. But the sense of collaboration is extended
further by the following caveat in the score: "Substitutions of
the above [instruments], if necessary, may be chosen by keeping the S-A-T-B
relation of the parts clear". This seems to invite others to take
part in the creative process. There is also a note regarding the dynamics
which "are scarcely indicated". The first note of each group
of 8th notes may be given a slight accent. The piece does not progress
from soft to loud but is continuously festive in intention, the changes
in amount and nature of activity producing changes in amplitude. This
suggests that they were not decided in advance; indeed, the implication
is that they came about by accident. There must, obviously, have been
some prior agreement between the composers regarding the tempo (Allegro
moderatro), metre (4/4) and overall length of the piece (200 bars). But
it is in the different ways chosen to subdivide this overall length that
the freedom offered by Cage`s system of durational structuring, and the
duality suggested by the title, become clear. Cage`s two parts appear
to be written within a broad framework of 14 2 + 4 4/4 bars. As with the
Third Construction there is some flexibility in the way this is handled,
the music for part 1 being written particularly freely. Its apparent macrocosmic
proportions (defined primarily by changes in instrumentation) of 2:5:7
are unused at the microcosmic level. Rather, the rhythmic motifs seem
to be freely composed, combined and varied. Part 3, written more systematically,
has a macro-structure of 7:1:1:5 (again defined primarily by changes in
instrumentation) which is reflected fairly consistently at the microcosmic
level as 7:2:5. However, the micro-structure effectively disappears during
the macro-5 section. Once again, the motivic patterns appear to be freely
composed. Harrison, as an outsider, obviously feels less responsibility
towards the system than dös Cage. Consequently, he treats it with
a greater degree of freedom: parts 2 and 4 are both constructed as 21
x 19-minim (i.e. 9 1/2 bar) units, with one minim (1/2 bar) remaining
at the end. Harrison articulates the 21 macro-units, in both parts, by
filling them with either sound or silence. If the former applies, then
he uses only one kind of instrument per unit. Each of these 19-minim macro-units
is then normally subdivided in the micro-proportions 12 and 1/2: 4 and
1/2: 2. (Note that as Harrison`s subdivision of the total of 200 bars
is not based on a square-root formula - c.f. Cage`s 14 2 (+4) bars - his
micro-structure cannot be replicated at the macrocosmic level.) The rhythmic
material Harrison invents articulates both the macro-structure (both parts
having an overall A-B-C-B-A shape in terms of the groups of motifs used)
and the micro-structure (example 5.29).The combination of the two composer`s
ideas produces music of irresistible rhythmic vitality.

Double Music is undoubtedly one of the more successful of Cage`s works from this period, this success stemming from its combination of stricture and freedom. The lessons learnt from this piece - and from others in the period after 1938 - were to serve Cage well for almost a decade.

She is asleep (1943)

She is Asleep is an unfinished suite of pieces that Cage wrote in 1943. Scored for voice, prepared piano and percussion quartet, the vocalist must make many performance decisions as the score offers little instruction for execution of the vocal part. She is Asleep is divided into two sections, the first of which is for tom-tom quartet, where "the musical interest is less at the note-to-note level and more at the larger scale of variations in texture and density".